‘For the first time in this story’s cinematic history, the two female leads are directed by a woman.’
Photograph: Liam Daniel/Focus Features

The argument that history is written by the winners depends on your definition of winning. Who “wins” in the struggle between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots may seem obvious in the director Josie Rourke’s new film, with its opening scene of Mary’s execution on Elizabeth’s orders in February 1587. But in naming the film after Mary, Rourke and screenwriter Beau Willimon imply that although Elizabeth won the battle over her Scottish cousin, it was Mary who triumphed in the longer historical war of sympathy and affection.

For the first time in this story’s cinematic history, the two female leads are directed by a woman who avoids the catfight trope and instead sees Elizabeth and Mary as potentially kindred spirits, whose antagonism is manufactured by their fearful and violent male lovers and counsellors.

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Such depictions will always be queried for their accuracy, but whatever really happened in the years leading up to Mary’s execution, the intoxicating mix of gender, politics and religion that defined her relationship with Elizabeth enabled subsequent generations to rewrite history according to their own beliefs and prejudices. Mary’s son – and Elizabeth’s successor – James I of England (James VI of Scotland) disowned his mother in pursuit of the English throne, but once crowned he erected a tomb in Westminster Abbey describing her as the “sure and certain heiress to the crown of England while she lived”. James and his Stuart successors had to tread carefully: as much as they tried to erase Elizabeth Tudor, their celebration of Mary Stuart as the dynasty’s founding matriarch was tempered by her Catholicism, and her political miscalculations haunted her grandson Charles I (who also went to the executioner’s block in 1649) and the deposed James II (James VII of Scotland).

Perhaps surprisingly the demise of the Stuarts and rise of the House of Hanover saw Mary’s stock rise even higher in contrast to Elizabeth’s. The Georgians saw Mary as an “injured princess”, a sentimental, heroine who chimed with the period’s embrace of sensibility and “feeling”. This was in sharp contrast to Elizabeth. Her sternest critic was Jane Austen, who denounced Elizabeth as a murdering “disgrace to humanity, that pest of society”. In contrast, Mary was an innocent and betrayed victim, “firm in her mind; constant in her religion”.

‘Over the last century, competing ideological positions have reimagined the two women in their own image.’ Vanessa Redgrave as Mary and Timothy Dalton as Lord Darnley in the 1971 film Mary, Queen of Scots. Photograph: Universal/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Elizabeth’s only saving grace is that Austen blamed the influence of her male counsellors for her “crimes”. Austen’s questionable history dovetailed with Friedrich Schiller’s verse play Mary Stuart from 1800, offering a romanticised version of Mary as a tragic heroine triumphing over Elizabeth’s cold and worldly machinations. Schiller in turn influenced Gaetano Donizetti’s 1834 opera Mary Stuart. Its portrayal of Elizabeth as a “vile bastard” who destroys Mary so appalled the nervous Neapolitan authorities that it was censored and banned.

The Victorians reimagined their relationship as a way of worrying over sexuality and the legitimacy of their female monarch. Both women were inevitably found wanting, although yet again Mary fared slightly better than Elizabeth. The Victorian historian James Anthony Froude wrote that “Elizabeth forgot the woman in the queen”, whereas “Mary Stuart when under the spell of an absorbing inclination could fling her crown into the dust and be woman all”. Elizabeth was seen as a great queen, but a deficient woman; Mary was a great woman, but a bad ruler. The Victorian moral from this 16th-century lesson was clear and enduring: femininity was incompatible with political rule.

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Over the last century, competing ideological positions have reimagined the two women in their own image. Elizabeth’s stock rose and Mary’s reputation waned as being too scandalous, too romantic and too, well, Scottish, for male English historians more interested in building the imperial and nationalist reputation of Gloriana. Feminist historians and biographers also concentrated on Elizabeth’s personal rule to the exclusion of parliament and counsellors. They also took her to task for selling out the sisterhood – an argument driven in the 1980s by the spectre of Margaret Thatcher aping the Tudor queen’s autocratic style – while Scottish historians reclaimed Mary as an icon of Scottish nationalism and political devolution.

If all history is to some extent a history of the present, where does this leave us today? Mary was a charismatic Scottish ruler who looked to Europe for support, in stark contrast to her English rival who isolated herself (if more on theological than political grounds). Sound familiar? What is important in using figures like Elizabeth and Mary in our current historical moment is to listen to the voices of these two women – rather than the assumptions made about them, primarily by men (such as myself). It is also essential to listen carefully to how women today interpret their voices, be they Josie Rourke or any number of other directors, performers or scholars who will undoubtedly give us more versions of Elizabeth and Mary.

This story has only just begun, so let’s give it time and avoid labelling either woman a winner – or a loser.

• Jerry Brotton is professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London